J.e. King

Controversies in Psychoanalytic Method: from Freud and Ferenczi to Michael Balint J.e. King

In his foreword to Controversies in Psychoanalytic Method, Daniel Stern writes:
"Andre Haynal gives us a perspective on the history of psychoanalysis, and much more, in this mult-faceted and remarkable book. Several stories and lines of enquiry are woven together. There is the story of the Budapest school of psychoanalysis and its impact. Within and around that story there are accounts of the lives and works of Ferenczi and Baliniwho provided the core of the Budapest school."

"And this brings us to the great controversy that began between Freud and Ferenczi, and was continued in the work of Baliant.
Haynal describes this controversy in terms of the initial form it took; a disagreement about experimenting with technique, and Ferenczi's pjlacing the analytic situation more squarely at the centre of the enquiry... But most valuable of all, he then elaborates upon the full implications of the controversy, and we discover this split to be at the heart of the major questions still at issue in psychoanalysis: Emphasis on technique vs. on metaphsychology; direct experience vs. insight; process vs. content; the patient's subjectivity vs. the 'scientific' theory; empathy vs. interpretation; a psychology of one person (the patient) vs. a psychology of two people, the patient-therapist dyad; transference-coutnertransference and the 'real' relationship."